Wreckage
by 1147694
Summary: SasukeNaruto AU. I’m not sure I could tell you why I jumped off the damn bridge on that cloudy July afternoon.


Disclaimer: Don't own; won't profit.

Author's notes: It's 10/10 again. That means it's Naruto's birthday, my penname's birthday, and my c2's birthday. Two years under this impossible moniker and loved the experience. Therefore, I was practically obligated to pull out something, even if it's a weird something and a first venture in first person Sasuke, in-character as I could make it. It's two-shot, maybe three-shot.

Anyway, being the 10/10 fic, there's a massive dedication.

DEDICATION: dedicated to those beautiful friends of mine who have turned inside out my writing & my ideas, who have between them this massive deposit of incredible talent. always in awe that you guys are so incredibly kind in conversation & encouragement & gifts & mentions. you know who you are. I am always grateful. dedicated also to those lovely readers, the enduring ones and the new ones, thank you for passing through and giving me a chance and your time. thank you for being always respectful & never harsh.

I make it sound so epic. But the appreciation is real.

Enjoy.

Author's other obvious notes: Yes, I know it's not 10/10 anymore. But this was supposed to be up yesterday.

* * *

_fish for ashes _presents

WRECKAGE

"speeding, into the horizon  
dreaming of the sirens  
wishing for broken glass on a highway  
it could be so easy"

* * *

1.

* * *

I'm not sure I could tell you why I jumped off the damn bridge on that cloudy July afternoon. It was only after I gave myself to gravity that I wondered why I did it.

I drove over that little bridge every evening coming home from work. I'd never taken much notice of it, except when I was speeding because there was a little white sign roadside that told me that I should be going sixtyfive, and then I'd pointedly accelerate another ten or so, just because I could, fuck the speed limit.

I never paid any attention to the river under it, either. There was never anything remarkable about that ribbon of bluegreen water. It wasn't a critical artery by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't lead into the heart of a glittering city. Nor was it beautiful enough to inspire the poets and the dreamers, no one lingered wistfully at its edge. I never heard anything about the dangers of it flooding. I never saw any fishermen sinking a hopeful line into its depths or any children playing on its gray shores. No murderer ever chucked a body into it, no cadaver ever washed up the next day only to be found by a hysterical local.

Never had I thought to commit suicide by going over, perhaps because somehow I knew my body _would_ wash up the next day and be found by a hysterical local. And fuck, I'd rather go by spontaneous combustion than let them touch my still corpse and manhandle it into some plastic bag. Let them find nothing but ashes.

I didn't commit suicide, though. I didn't even attempt.

No, I jumped off the bridge and fell those twelve feet on that July afternoon because I was going after someone else who did. Attempt suicide, that is.

There usually weren't any cars by the time I drove over the bridge after work. So it slightly piqued my interest when one was in front of me as I headed home that July afternoon. I was driving angry again, though, and the car in front of me kept me driving the sixtyfive that I was supposed to. That pissed me off a little. It pissed me off a little more that I couldn't remedy it. The single-lane road would not let me pass the speed-limit-minding black car with the yellow racing stripes.

We were only two on that lonely highway.

When the black car abruptly swerved, going through the metal railing like a wrecking ball through tissue paper, I was became the only one on that lonely highway.

I watched the vehicle drive on – _nothing_, actually, wheels spinning without the solidity of pavement beneath it. Strangely enough, it was almost a graceful motion: the way the metal machine arced through the air, elegantly, downward, ever closer to impact. Reaching impact, though, was anything but graceful. It was only the sound of metal forcefully displacing water that made me realize what was happening, that some poor fuck was either drunk or ending his wretched existence.

Goddamned idiot.

But that sound of car to water, the crush of steel against hydrogen-two-oxygen – that must have been the catalyst. It's not very clear to me what possessed me to follow him. Because I don't remember getting out of my car, I don't remember walking over and staring down the twelve feet at the vehicle just below the surface, I don't remember taking off my shoes, which was about all I took off, I discovered later. I don't remember staring down and watching the black car with the yellow racing strips become a steel prison in dark waters for its misguided driver.

But I remember jumping.

I remember the rush of air, falling, and wondering why I did it.

And there was a moment of madness, maybe, if the very act of jumping didn't count. As I fell, I could have sworn that I heard delicate piano arpeggios, sweet and ghostly, unseen gentle fingers on unseen white keys.

I remember the way water felt, I remember crashing through it, and I remember the delicate melody fading. It was much colder than I expected, though I didn't know what I was expecting. There was also an instant that I didn't know what I was doing, suspended in a cold watery darkness, feeling so _so_ heavy. It might have been then that I first thought about death by drowning. But – _let them find nothing but ashes_, and so I moved. To do perhaps what my body and soul had wanted to do from the beginning, without passing along even the faintest idea to my mind.

Even in the dim light of a cloudy day filtered through green water, I could see the yellow racing stripes, and then I could see the car's outline, just a little way from me. It was somewhat of a shallow river, after all, maybe thirty feet to the bottom at its very deepest point. But I suppose even the shallower ten or twelve feet was enough to drown suicidal dumbfucks and the mentally afflicted young men who go after them.

I must have swum over and broke the window, and pulled the idiot from the car somehow. We must have swum up, we must have broken the bluegreen surface of the world's most unremarkable river, faces towards a cloudy July sky, must have been clutching each other in a most undignified way. It must be true, because I vaguely remember a warm, wet, trembling body against my own warm, wet, trembling body. I vaguely remember the strangeness of holding hands underwater. I vaguely remember the relief of sweet oxygen in slowly burning lungs. It must be true because I remember these things somewhat, and because it's what he told me later.

* * *

I woke up to white, antiseptic hospital walls and a young man flirting with the pretty nurse with green eyes. I lay there silently for moment, wondering. I wondered why I felt like I should be quietly drowning somewhere, and why it was so strange that the hospital sheets felt so dry and starched and cool against my skin. And why, when the young man – with bright yellow hair and bright blue eyes – reached over and touched his fingers to mine, my hands remembered the touch.

"Oh my god. You're awake!" The young man turned to the pretty young nurse, grinning, but he had lost her attention. She was looking at me like it was the first time, transfixed, a little dazed; it was as if I hadn't already been lying in the hospital bed before her for – god, I didn't know how long. The young man with the yellow hair didn't seem to notice, because he had begun talking to me again. He spoke entirely too loudly. And like everything about him, a little too brightly.

But the words I heard, the sounds I heard from his mouth, didn't make sense to me. It was a complete disconnect, and I was wondering what the _hell_ had happened to my head, a concussion perhaps?, because nothing was making sense at _all _and it was like listening to someone speaking underwater –

_Underwater_.

I sat up.

A few things connected, made sense.

_Underwater_.

The young man talking was the idiot who had driven off the goddamned bridge.

I had –

Dimness. Bluegreen water. Yellow racing stripes. Hands, his. Hands, mine. Desperate, to the surface. Falling.

_Underwater_.

… rescued him? But – then why the fuck was _I_ the one in the hospital bed?

My head hurt and he was still talking, my god why won't he shut the fuck up. Growing pain nibbled away at common sense and suddenly I hated this mess, I hated that I couldn't make sense of it all, I hated that the picture was so blurred and that I couldn't understand. Too many gray areas, too much uncertainty, and for some reason, I was extremely angry at myself for a moment.

And then an entirely loud: "Shit, are you mute or something?"

_That_ made sense to me – thank _god_, cognitive abilities still existed – and it pissed me off, too. The young man had a god given talent for it, it seemed. Pissing me off, that is. From his car forcing me to obey the speed limit, to swerving his car off the bridge, to (what the hell?) calling me _mute_ –

"No." I said shortly. And then – "You're the idiot who drove off the bridge."

"Yes. You can talk! Wait, no. Hey! I'm not an idiot! Jesus _Christ_, you're an asshole." His hand was still resting on mine and the heat of his fingers was doing funny things to my heartbeat. And then his voice softened, which did more funny things to me: "God, I'm sorry. I mean, I don't even know how to say it right. God, how to do this. Yeah, heh, um. I don't even know your name – " He broke off.

_Don't tell me yours_.

A desperate wish, half-formed, surfaced and in that second, I wanted nothing more than for him to stop right there, to disappear. I didn't want to know. Maybe I felt it even then. The look in his eyes, though, and I knew he was going to tell me and I was going to tell him and something was going to change because Sasuke Uchiha played hero one afternoon even if he didn't know why.

"Hi, my name is Naruto Uzumaki." He finally removed his hand so that he could hold it out for a handshake. "Yours?"

"… Sasuke Uchiha." I said, and the name, my damn name – it sounded very bitter even to my ears.

* * *

The pretty young nurse had been quiet throughout the entire time. I forgot she was there, even with her beautiful green eyes that would not stop looking at me. I remembered her later, though. Her lovely face, and those green eyes, would occasionally pass through my dreams on troubled nights months later. Waking up, I would try to remember the name pinned to the front of her neat white uniform.

But I wouldn't be able to.

* * *

"Lemme take you out. No, really. No buts, bastard." We were in the my car. He was driving.

Naruto Uzumaki insisted that I had dinner with him, when the hospital released me half an hour after I woke up. It was almost seven-thirty. My arm was bandaged and a little numb. Naruto wouldn't stop talking. About the most trivial things, and I didn't pay much attention, but I suspected that Naruto was just afraid of silence. So Naruto drove my car, and talked, and told me that my arm was bandaged because I had sustained some shallow cuts from breaking his driver side window and reaching through it to pull him out.

And despite determined effort and courageous prodding, the conversation faltered. Blame me, I suppose, because I was looking out the window for much of it.

Something – I didn't know what it was – changed, minutely. And suddenly, I wasn't looking out the window anymore, but I was looking at Naruto's profile. A stranger at the wheel of my car, staring straight ahead. I wondered if Naruto was going to drive _my_ car off the road as well, taking me with him in what he didn't manage to succeed the first time this afternoon.

I still didn't know whether or not if Naruto had been high or drunk, or if it was a simple case of losing control of the car. Or maybe the annoying idiot was really attempting suicide back there. (Why the fuck was I letting him drive again?) I didn't know when I decided Naruto hadn't been on anything, but I did. I guess I should have concluded that, with the way he was acting and taking me out to dinner and that whole charade, it was just because Naruto lost control of the car. But I didn't.

I should have asked him then.

But then he said, very seriously: "You passed out after we made it up top. I swam both of us to the shore, and then I carried you up back up to the bridge, an' – sorry – but I looked through your stuff, and I found your keys in your pocket. I drove your car to the hospital and they took you away because you were still out cold. They couldn't wake you, for a while."

He smiled lightly, "And don't worry. I'm not gonna total your car, too. I'm a licensed driver, promise. And I've had a bit of lifeguarding, too. I wouldn't have let you drown."

I said nothing, but I kept looking at him. Those direct blue eyes of his were directly on the road ahead.

I don't know why I knew this, because I had only known him for two or three hours or something like that, but I knew the way he was talking, the vaguely bleak tone, didn't fit well with him. Mismatched, but only sort of. The grimness was too easy a countenance on his sunny features. It made me a little uncomfortable. My arm ached.

"Especially not when, um, you saved my life. I couldn't have gotten myself out of that one, I think. Um. Thank you. I don't know how many times I can say it to – to the kind of meaning I wanna leave on you, for what you did. Even if I took you to dinner every day this year, or something. You're damn crazy, but I'm damn glad you saved my life."

"I didn't mean to." The words unexpectedly left my mouth, and the sound of the syllables hung in the air between us for a while. I wondered what he would say, and then I wondered why I cared. I didn't want him to take me to dinner every day of this calendar year, I didn't want him to compose a long painfully sincerely thank-you letter, I didn't want him to tell me I was a hero.

Because I wasn't. Whatever the fuck I did on the bridge, I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't heroic. I had no noble intention throbbing in my heart or resonating in my veins, nothing propelled me to save a life just because it was the right thing to do or anything like that. Not even close.

Naruto still wasn't looking at me, but the corners of his lips quirked up slightly.

"You're still kind of an asshole, Mr. Sasuke Uchiha, but I'm gonna to take you to dinner whether you like it or not. Because I am in monstrous debt to you, unfortunately. So let's do this shit."

He laughed.

It wasn't as light as I thought it might be; nor did was it as abrasive as it equally could have been.

* * *

Sasuke,

The proper thing for me to write about is a polite thanks for having dinner with me, and maybe a very long letter about how damn grateful I am. I know you must have been tired and all, last night, with the whole crazy thing about jumping into a river to save someone you didn't know and being unconscious and everything. Maybe dragging you to dinner wasn't the greatest idea in the world, but I had to leave right after and I wanted to at least _try_ and express the gratitude stuff, do the gentlemanly thing for once.

So what's this letter again? Right – thank you for having dinner with me, bastard, and thank you for saving my life.

– Naruto.

* * *

Sasuke,

I kind of thought that I would be able to stop myself from writing you another letter. Obviously, I couldn't. Do you think it's weird that you're getting unsolicited mail from someone you've only known a day? I think that it's weird that I'm sending unsolicited mail to someone I've only known a day. Weird, totally weird.

I thought you might want to know that I liked you, though. When we had dinner a month ago? I mean, half the time, I was calling you 'bastard' (because you are, don't get any delusions in your head that you're not), but I liked you. You're not exactly sociable, but I liked you. And sure, I like everyone, but I didn't think I would like you, honestly. That's kind of mean, because you're supposed to be my personal savior or something.

You're not the world's most charming and sociable person, but you're something.

I thought maybe you could tell me about yourself.

I'll tell you about me. If you were here, you'd probably make a sarcastic remark. I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and I'm twentyfive. I'm in San Francisco, right now, if you couldn't tell by the return address on this envelope. I have a feeling you're one of those damned-smart people, though, the kind who notice every single little thing, so I think you already came to the conclusion. Anyway, I'm in San Fran. For work, mostly, but I'm thinking that I might stay here after all. It's nice. I like people and _most_ people like me – I used to call it the Uzumaki charm when I was in high school and a little stupider. I like to talk. My favorite color is orange and I painted my kitchen walls orange. I have this undying love for ramen. I like to watch football. And I really miss my car.

Isn't this crazy? I feel like I'm doing one of those penpal things that they made us do in fifth grade or something.

I think you should write back. It might negate your asshole factor.

– Naruto.

* * *

I wrote back.

I'm not sure I wanted to, but it felt like I had to. Solitude didn't let me rationalize anything away; an empty house does not help one lie to oneself. I was listless, I was despondent, I was alone. Well, fuck, that's just what was wrong with me. I knew that I was all those things. So I went for it – I pulled out a white sheet of paper, I pulled out a pen, and I sat down, tried to write. I sat at the desk for a long time before I pressed the tip to the page, thinking about bright yellow hair and bright blue eyes.

What does one say to a stranger?

In the end, it wasn't very hard. I wrote that I didn't have to be there to make sarcastic remarks, idiot. Don't call me your personal savior ever again. I told you I didn't really want to do it. It's your fault your car is now an environmental hazard about twelve feet underwater. I wrote I didn't like people and I wrote that I didn't like him.

I addressed the envelope and put the stamp on very slowly.

I didn't hear the sound of paper falling upon paper when I dropped the envelope in the blue mailbox two blocks from my office. I didn't realize I was listening for it but I left when I realized I hadn't heard it.

* * *

The next letter I received from Naruto Uzumaki started with _You're a real sweatheart, Mr. Uchiha_.

My next letter started with _Why the hell are you still writing to me?_

He wrote in his fourth letter that he already told me that he liked me, is it wrong to extend the hand of friendship to someone who obviously had severe social and mental issues? He told me that it wasn't healthy for me to be the way I was. From three letters and four hours, Naruto Uzumaki already thought he had me figured out, pretty much. He wrote that he thought that I needed a friend. He wrote that if he thought he was truly bothering me, he would have stopped at the second letter.

Like the first time, I didn't know why I wrote back. But I did. Again and again and again.

And so did he.

* * *

Maybe I began waiting for the mail. Maybe I kept the letters that he sent me. Maybe an incredibly strange feeling spread through my chest when he first signed it _Your friend, Naruto_.

* * *

Sometimes, sitting at my desk at my shit job, I looked at his picture a little too long.

He had started sending me pictures, of little things that he thought were interesting. I didn't know people still used Polaroid cameras, but he did. He scrawled little notes on the white edge on the bottom, sometimes upside down. Because he felt like it. He sent me photographs of the ocean, he sent me photographs of tagged fire hydrants, he sent me pictures of dogs and children and funny socks he saw in a store window.

In November, he sent me a picture of himself on a swing. That was the picture that I put on my desk.

When I thought I would go blind with rage, when I was sitting in the little white cubicle with papers and ignorant morons around me, when my boss let his hand linger on my shoulder a moment too long, when my boss assigned the most tedious tasks because he knew I'd get angry, when my co-workers murmured about me and my name, when they avoided my eyes –

I looked at the picture. I looked at the stranger who drove his way, wrote his way into my life.

I felt stupid doing it, keeping his picture around like that. But I couldn't put it away. I brought it to work every day and I brought it home, too.

* * *

I found Naruto Uzumaki sitting on my doorstep one afternoon in February.

My house was two miles from the bridge. Its bricks were gray; its shingles were a darker gray. I had a gravel driveway that hadn't been driven on by any car except my own in years. Old trees that had been there before my house was built and would be there after my house was gone stood silently and darkly around my property. I had no neighbors. It was the loneliest, dreariest house in the world, for all its beautiful mahogany furniture and dark velvet drapes in its chambers.

Naruto Uzumaki, with his bright corn-colored hair and bright sky-colored eyes, looked so out of place.

"Afternoon," he said cheerfully. He looked so young with that blond hair falling into his eyes. He looked like he didn't belong here. Even I knew the place was decaying by the day. It didn't take a cynic like me to know it. His place was somewhere that wasn't moldering away under the weight of years of lonely grandeur.

"Why are you here?" I asked flatly.

"Can't you ever be nice?" Naruto asked, unfolding his legs and standing up to greet me. "Bastard. And here I thought we were getting kind of, you know, friendly."

I couldn't answer that. I thought I could feel the individual weight of the Polaroid of his smiling self on the swing set making my briefcase heavy.

But it didn't matter that I didn't say anything. He continued talking anyway, "And man, I didn't notice how depressing your place is when I was here last time."

He had been here once, only, when he dropped my car and I off that night we had dinner together. He took the bus back to – back to wherever, and I could only assume that the bus was how he got here this time, too.

"How's the arm, anyway?" He asked me curiously.

"Fine," I said shortly.

"Great! You can drive this time, because we're going out to dinner again. Hell, I'm forcing you. Get in the car."

* * *

Halfway through dinner, I knew that Naruto had already messed me up, changed me, took something out and put something in, and I wasn't sure of anything anymore. He lit some catalyst, caused some reaction, and I was letting it happen.

"My God, you're smiling. Kind of, if I squint," Naruto declared, putting down his fork. "I must amuse you. You think I'm funny or endearing in some odd and deranged way and you can't believe it, can you? And we haven't even pulled out the alcohol yet. Shit, that's crazy." He lowered his voice, lips quirked mischievously. "Sasuke Uchiha, you like me! This, sir, is the start of a beautiful friendship."

"For fuck's sake you're an idiot."

"An idiot who charms you out of your socks, right, bastard? By the way, did you see that crazy pair socks in the picture I sent you? I want those. Seriously."

"I'm thinking you lied to me when you told me you were twentyfive."

"I would _never_. The Uzumaki honor code dictates that I not lie. But I'm actually twenty_six_ now. Anyway, I didn't have the money, but I had my camera on me, and I took a picture so I could send it to my friend, the king of all socially-deprived bastards." Naruto leaned over and poked me in the arm. I pushed his hand away, and he laughed. "That's you, if you didn't realize. And look, you're kind of smiling again."

* * *

Maybe I was.

* * *

Author's notes: IHY, Sasuke-characterization. Happy birthday, Naruto. Happy birthday, account.

Hit me with some feedback, yo. Or love. Hit me with some love? Thank you all for two lovely years. I'll be thanking my way through the rest of this story.


End file.
